“I’d like to use one of the department computers for a while if that’s all right.”
Adams arched a grizzled eyebrow, and his intense brown eyes filled with question. “Personal or department related?”
“Personal. I have two systems at home, but the Internet speed here is faster.”
Adams stepped over to the coffee machine, presenting his back to Barney. “Help yourself. Just don’t lose sleep and be an asshole tomorrow.”
Barney grinned. “Speaking of which, you’re here mighty late. Did something come up?”
“Nah. The wife is out of town visiting her sister, so I went to the Cauldron for supper.” Marietta, Blake Adams’s spouse, was a plump blonde with a smile that could melt ice and a personality to match. Barney imagined that the sheriff felt lost without her. “On the way home, I decided to stop in here and check on things. Nothing to do at the house but eat chips and watch TV.”
Barney moved deeper into the room, which accommodated six metal desks. The deputies in Mystic Creek shared the office furniture and equipment. Because they rotated in and out, doing desk duty only when they weren’t working in the field, six computers facilitated everyone. Barney waved at a couple of buddies and then got on a computer toward the back of the room where no one would see what came up on the screen.
Barney knew the newspaper in Erickson, Oregon, was named the Sentinel Guard because the publication was sold at newsstands in Mystic Creek. When he ran a search on Taffeta Brown in the online archives, he came up with nothing. He decided she might be using her maiden name now, so he ran a search on attorneys in Erickson with the first name Phillip. He found several, but he was able to rule out over half of them because they looked too old in their photographs to have been her husband. He began pairing Taffeta with the remaining surnames as he searched the newspaper archives.
Bingo. Her last name had been Gentry.
The story she had told Barney at the restaurant pretty much matched what he read in the news articles. It still troubled Barney that she’d been found guilty if she actually wasn’t, though. He believed in the court system. He understood that sometimes people were wrongly convicted of crimes, but he liked to think it didn’t happen often. It looked as though she’d been convicted more on testimony than actual evidence, but he couldn’t be certain.
Barney wished he could review the court documents, but though he had spearheaded many investigations during his career, he had never had reason to peruse old trial records. Luckily he had a friend who might be able to tell him how to do it.
Finished with his mission, Barney stopped by Sheriff Adams’s office to say good night and thank him for the use of the computer. He told Doreen to stop popping her gum as he passed her station. Ignoring her irked look, he left the building. The air outside smelled like smoke. He remembered that a low-pressure system had moved in, suppressing the drift from people’s chimneys. When that happened, the whole town smelled like a damp campfire.
Once in his Ram, he called an old classmate of his from the University of Oregon who now practiced law in nearby Erickson. His name was Bryan Vorch, which had always made Barney think of some character in Star Wars. He supposed that a lot of people had reason to dislike their names. Jokesters like Doreen made him detest his more with each passing day.
“Hey, Barney!” Bryan said when he answered the call. “Good to hear from you!”
“We need to do a better job of keeping in touch,” Barney replied. “I think of you a lot, but I’m so busy that I never get around to contacting you. We burned a lot of midnight oil together studying for finals.”
“And guzzled so much coffee that I’m surprised my eyes didn’t turn brown.”
They shot the bull for a minute before Barney told him why he had called. “I want to review a court case,” he said, “and I don’t have a clue where to start.”
“Court proceedings are public records and available to almost everyone,” Bryan told him. “Normally a person has to fill out a form and sometimes pay a small fee to review public records, but I do it so much in my line of work that I pay an annual fee for almost instant access. I could pull the docs up and e-mail them to you. Or, if you’d like to cut me a check for the cost, I can send you a download for the recorded version.”
“I’ll take the files, thanks.” Barney had to watch his budget. “And it’s great of you to offer to do this, Bryan. There’s only one wrinkle. The lady who stood trial is a friend of mine, and I don’t want word to get out here in Mystic Creek that she was convicted of a crime.”
“I’m your man, then. You’re the only person in Mystic Creek that I know.”
Barney laughed and gave him Taffeta’s married name. “She was convicted of abusing her little girl.”
“Oh, shit, I remember the trial,” Bryan said. “It dominated the front page of the Sentinel Guard for over a week. She was married to that dickhead Phillip Gentry.” Bryan whistled. “He’s bad news, dude. I’ll be happy to e-mail you the files. I still have your e-mail address unless you changed it.”
“I haven’t. I have enough trouble trying to remember my current one,” Barney said with a chuckle. “I really appreciate this, Bryan. I owe you one.”
Barney had just pulled up in front of his house when his phone pinged to notify him of an incoming e-mail. Hopefully from Bryan, he thought.
Normally Barney went to bed fairly early unless he went to Crystal Falls for an evening on the town. But despite his former weariness, now he suddenly felt wired. He got that way whenever something intrigued him, and Taffeta Brown sure as heck did, even though he’d been thrown by her crazy proposition.
He fed his two geldings and Mary Lou, the cow, before he went inside, cursing when bits of hay got under the collar of his shirt. He usually wore a wool jacket with the collar turned up when he tended to his animals. He’d filled the chicken feeder that morning, so the hens needed no attention.
He flipped on a light as he stepped through the back door into the kitchen. His brother Jeb had helped with the remodeling, designing banks of new cabinets that looked nearly as old as the ones they had replaced. True to the character of the structure, he’d said, and Barney liked the results, which were countrified, warm, and perfect for an old farmhouse. He opened the stainless steel fridge to get the fixings for a sandwich and grabbed a can of soda to wash it down. Minutes later, he had a fire snapping and popping in the hearth, and he sat in his burgundy recliner to open his laptop. The flames cast an amber glow over the room, highlighting the rustic barn-plank flooring, which had taken a year of his savings to install. Sitting there reminded him of when he’d told Taffeta where he most enjoyed reading. The memory made him sad. She had seemed so right for him when they were discussing favorite books. Oh well, he guessed that every guy got bamboozled by a female at least once.
He spent the remainder of the evening reading about Taffeta’s trial. Barney was no attorney, but it appeared to him that there had been little, if any, solid evidence presented by the prosecutor to prove that Taffeta had purposefully harmed her daughter. Just as she’d said at the restaurant, she had wrapped the child in a blanket and driven her to the hospital. Nowhere did Barney read that police officers had visited the house to examine the accident scene. Accident? Was he starting to believe her claims, after all? He guessed maybe so. It looked to Barney as if she had been convicted mostly on the strength of her husband’s testimony.
It had grown too late to call Bryan Vorch back to ask his opinion, so Barney sent his old friend an e-mail, asking him if he’d be willing to review the case and share his thoughts on the apparent lack of physical evidence. Would Bryan feel that Taffeta had gotten a fair shake?
• • •
Saturday morning dawned bright and sunny, and while Barney drank his wake-up coffee, he stared out his kitchen window, wishing he could spend the day behind the wheel of a county truck, driving the streets and roads of Mystic Cre
ek. Count on it to be a lovely day when he’d be stuck inside. Desk duty had never appealed to him. He hated all the paperwork, and when calls were directed to him by the dispatcher, he yearned to be out in the field talking in person to the individual. It was connecting with people that made him love law enforcement. If and when he became the sheriff, he would pawn the paperwork off on subordinates as much as possible and work the streets. Until then, he had to climb the ladder.
Anne Warf, a well-seasoned dispatcher, greeted Barney with a halfhearted smile when he arrived for work at ten. A slender woman with dark eyes, black hair, and eyebrows that looked as if they’d been drawn on with a felt pen, she had celebrated her forty-fourth birthday last month, and in June she would mark her twenty-fifth anniversary with the department. Most of the time, her seniority afforded her the privilege of working weekdays, but every once in a while, she got stuck working Saturday and Sunday to give someone else time off.
“Don’t tell me what a beautiful day it is,” she warned. “I’ll say I’m sick and go home.”
Barney couldn’t help laughing. He poured her a cup of coffee and brought it back out to her. “Maybe this will cheer you up,” he said as he set it on her desk.
“Nothing will cheer me up. It’s the first real day of spring, and I’m stuck at this stupid station fielding calls that make me grind my teeth! Christopher Doyle called in to say that Edna Slash is parading around on her porch half-naked, and he wants her arrested for indecent exposure.”
Barney nearly choked on a laugh. “Those two are always bickering about something, Anne. I think it’s the geriatric version of flirting with each other.”
“They’re a pain in my arse,” she shot back. “It’s the first real day of spring, I’m telling you.”
That made him laugh again. “Anne, you’ve lived here too long to believe that this break in the weather means anything. Mother Nature loves to play games with us in April and sometimes even in May. The second we start to believe spring has finally arrived, she dumps a foot of snow on us.”
“My crocuses are blooming. My daffodils are poking their heads up. That’s a sure sign.”
“You say that every year.” As Barney walked back toward the desk area, he said over his shoulder, “I detest desk duty, you know. We can grouse about having to be here all day, or we can make the best of it.”
Garrett Jones, one of Barney’s fellow deputies, gave him a mock salute from a corner desk. His dark brown hair looked as if he’d been thrusting his fingers through it, and he had circles under his blue eyes.
“Late night partying?” Barney asked.
Garrett ignored the dig. “You ever wonder what the fricking hell everyone else does when they have desk duty? It sure as hell isn’t paperwork.”
Studying the piles of stuff in front of him, Barney saw Garrett’s point. “Maybe they play games on their phones.”
“There’s an idea, only I hate playing games. And Sheriff Adams has the computers locked down so tight that you can’t do much of anything on the Net except research. Facebook is blocked. Blogs are blocked. It’s a boring pain in the ass.”
Barney had never tried to go online except for department business. He’d been taught good work ethics by his parents, and fooling around when he was being paid to do a job didn’t occur to him. He blocked out Garrett’s whining and started sorting through the backlog of reports.
By noon, Anne had patched in only two calls on his phone line to break the monotony. Marjorie Jane Roberts, who lived on Bearberry Loop overlooking the golf course, wanted to know if it was too close to fire season for her husband, Pete, to use their burning barrel. Devon Penny called to ask if Barney had any work on his property that Devon could do for ten dollars an hour. Barney felt badly for saying no, especially when the boy dickered with him on the wage, dropping it to eight an hour. Devon was a nice kid with a single mom who struggled to make ends meet. But on a deputy’s salary, Barney couldn’t afford hired help. He suggested that Devon call his brother Jeb, who often brought in kids to help him out.
By two, Barney’s stomach felt as empty as a beggar’s pocket. He was just tidying up his desk before going out for lunch when his personal cell phone rang. Bryan Vorch. Barney signaled to Garrett that he was leaving for his break and answered the call as he passed Anne’s station.
“Hey, Bryan. I didn’t expect to hear back from you this soon.”
Bryan chuckled. “My wife took my little girl shopping in Eugene, so I found myself spending Saturday alone. It’s raining like a son of a bitch over here in the valley, so I can’t get in a game of golf. And it’s too damned wet to do any yard work, thank God. Reading about Taffeta Gentry’s trial was a lot more interesting than raking up rotten leaves that I missed last fall.”
Barney crossed the parking lot to sit in his truck, where no one would overhear his side of the conversation. “You’ve already gone over the file?”
“Oh yeah,” Bryan confirmed. “And you’re right on target, Barney. There was no concrete evidence to convict this lady. The prosecutor’s case rested mainly on Phillip Gentry’s testimony. The little girl’s physical injuries could have been sustained from a beating, but they also could have happened during a fall down a flight of stairs. You have to remember that Phillip swore on the stand that Taffeta had abused the child countless times. The hospital records of the two earlier accidents that Sarah had were ambiguous, allowing Phillip’s attorney to imply that the injuries could have been inflicted on the child by her mother.”
“How can someone be convicted on testimony alone?”
“It happens,” Bryan assured him. “And Phillip Gentry wasn’t just any witness. He was Taffeta’s husband. At the time of the trial, Phillip’s father, Cameron Gentry, had been pulling strings to cover up his son’s unsavory behavior, so Phillip appeared to be a credible witness—a charming, successful young attorney with a brilliant future. Why would a judge think that he’d tell such outlandish lies about his own wife?”
Barney had no answer. “So you think Gentry lied?”
“I didn’t at the time, but I sure do now. Cameron Gentry can no longer cover up Phillip’s reckless lifestyle, so Phillip’s credibility is down the drain.”
“Exactly what do you mean by reckless lifestyle?” Barney asked.
“Phillip is a complete jerk, Barney. He can’t even be faithful to a mistress, let alone a wife. He’s got a reputation for barhopping and hitting on young women—really young women. Not long ago, he was charged with statutory rape because a girl he bedded was under eighteen. He got off only because she used a fake ID to get into the drinking establishment. Phillip’s attorney argued that even the doorman believed she was twenty-one.” With a snort, Bryan added, “When I see a young girl slathered with makeup and dressed to seduce, I can usually tell, if I look closely, that she isn’t of age. And while having sex with her, Phillip had to have gotten a really close look unless he was too drunk or tweaked to see straight.”
“Tweaked?”
“He’s into meth. In fact, rumor has it that he’s dealing now that his father has washed his hands of him. Without Daddy’s money, Phillip has to bring in cash somehow to maintain his playboy lifestyle. If he doesn’t get a brand-new Corvette every year, he thinks it’s the end of the world.”
Barney stared blindly ahead. “So Taffeta told me the God’s honest truth last night.”
“Yes, and in answer to your e-mail question, I don’t believe she got a fair shake during the trial. Cameron Gentry, her former father-in-law, is a great attorney, a decent person, and he’s devoted to the law. But his son? He’s a complete prick, and now just about everyone in Erickson knows it. I’d bet my bankroll that the bastard lied on the stand.”
“According to Taffeta, he wanted out of the marriage when she got pregnant and refused to get an abortion. He didn’t want kids.”
“He’s too immature and selfish to want kids,” B
ryan said. “Think about it. It’s expensive to raise a child, and Phillip probably didn’t want big chunks of his allowance from Daddy to be wasted on a brat. As for divorce? Hell, no. Taffeta would have gotten custody, and Phillip would have been ordered to pay child support. Even worse, Cameron Gentry would not have approved if Phillip ended the marriage without good reason, and he might have stopped giving Phillip money. Phillip’s a player, Barney. He pretends he’s still in his early twenties. Having a family would screw with his image and cramp his style. The guy still drives to Eugene and hangs out on the U of O campus, preying on young girls.”
Barney didn’t get how anyone could be so selfish that he never wanted children because of money. Sure, raising a family was costly, but kids brought people joy and gave them a reason for being.
“You should have seen his second wife,” Bryan went on. “A sleazy blonde with a bad boob job. I’m talking huge knockers, man. They looked like overblown balloons. She was twenty, and she danced in strip clubs. A few months ago, she left Phillip and filed for divorce because he couldn’t keep his fly zipped.”
“So you really believe Taffeta is innocent.” Barney felt nauseated. He had been downright rude to her last night. She’d left herself wide-open to rejection and humiliation, and he’d delivered on both counts.
“I do,” Bryan replied without hesitation. “At the time of her trial, I have to admit that I thought she was guilty, just like everyone else in town did. Phillip appeared to be a squared-away guy back then. But now the truth is out. He’s a scum ball, and I wouldn’t put anything past him.”
“Does Taffeta have any recourse?” Barney asked.
Silence came over the line. Bryan finally replied, “She should file for an appeal to get the conviction overturned. I happen to know a halfway decent attorney who’d do that for her at a discounted rate.”
Barney smiled. “That’s really generous, Bryan.”
“Lawyers like Phillip Gentry give the rest of us a bad name. I’d love to peel his hide off in court.”